SOURCE: "Poetic Ideal and Fictional Reality in the Izumi Shikibu nikki," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1, 1977, pp. 135-82.

In the following excerpt, Walker analyzes the structure of the Izumi Shikibu Diary, emphasizing its two competing modes of presentation—idealism and realism.

The Izuin Shikibu nikki (Izumi Shikibu Diary, 1008?), one of the masterpieces of Heian prose literature, is a fictional narrative or fictionalized memoir which depicts a love affair between the famous Heian poetess Izumi Shikibu and a certain Prince Atsumichi. In its close observation of the fluctuations of the individual will of the characters, the Diary shares the realistic preoccupations of much Heian fiction. The conflict in temperament between these two real and fictionally plausiblepeople, a conflict which is finally resolved in harmony, provides the dramatic tension and the "plot" of the work. But the Diary can also be seen as a work in the romance...